Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Precepts or maxims are of great weight and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
No man was ever wise by chance.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In war there is no prize for runner-up.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both this is an observation of the Middle Way.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If you wished to be loved, love.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He who has great power should use it lightly.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
He that does good to another does good also to himself.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Genius always gives its best at first prudence, at last.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Friendship always benefits love sometimes injures.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
For greed all nature is too little.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune all these are names of the one and selfsame God.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A great mind becomes a great fortune.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A great fortune is a great slavery.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.